What a wonderful explanation.  Thanks for the history lesson.

An excellent summary, thanks Steve 👍

Love watching these format and book selling explanations.  I've learned a lot and I still get it wrong sometimes.

I started buying paperbacks in the 70s and I recall being annoyed that the Tolkeins were bigger than everything else. Also annoyed that US  mass market paperbacks were  slightly narrower than the UK ones. By the 80s I was buying hardcovers too so the symmetry on my bookshelves was gone completely.  Locus Magazine still uses  "pb", "tp" & "hc" in its listings.

It comes to mind what the impetus was for publishers to abandon "A format" and move towards "B format" when the A format takes up less space, has a lower shipping cost due to lower weight, uses less paper/ink and fits neatly into a suitcoat pocket. I am quite fond of my PB's here in the states, despite my Outlaw Bookseller-inspired shift to strictly hardcover format for all recent and future acquisitions. I wonder if PB's from the heyday will enjoy an increase in value due to burgeoning scarcity. Thanks, OB, for another educational presentation about the wheres and whatfors of pub industry nomenclature and practices. I found it fascinating. Well done, sir. Cheers!

Where it comes to the death of the mass market paperback, MURDER was the case.

My absolute favorite format for a book is a pocket book. Being able to put a book in my back pocket and pull it out anywhere and read it is a great feeling. Thanks for your channel.

Ah, thanks. Dover books were an early entry in trade paperbacks, here, in the US. Doubleday had the once truly great Anchor books imprint in "A format" which was pretty highbrow as  was Vintage books. You don't see books at drugstores and "five and ten" shops or "dime" stores like we used to call them when I was a child in the 60s and 70s. Given the relatively low literacy level of most Americans (alas) the book trade in the US has become more and more of a specialty business. Publishing focuses on high school and college students, and women. A trip to Target now tells a sad story: The small book section is there for women. Even Bantam books published people like Bucky Fuller and Gregory Bateson in the 70s. I have a copy of Making It by Nornan Podhoretz in a Bantam. I've gradually moved to ebooks myself for various reasons. I remember being pleasantly surprised at finding a Dean Ing paperback novel in a gas station/convenience store in the Texas Hill Country in the late 80s, those days are long gone.

I liked Picador a lot, picking up several "Sapper" novels at Tower Books in Sacramento, California, back in the early and mid 80's.  I love British paperbacks (and hardcovers).

It's great to hear your learned and nuanced view on the subject of mass market paperbacks.

thank you for your explanation, veteran bookseller knowlege, great video as usual 🔥

Thanks for your insight!

Very informative as always Thank you!

I work in a bookshop here in the States that sells new and used books, and we still use the descriptor "trade paperback" for B format and "mass market" or "pocket book" for A format. Apart from the big chain stores, most independent American bookshops follow the same protocol. I appreciate the distinction between the two, but I doubt the nomenclature will change here for some time. Thanks for an interesting video!

Hi David. This history of formats was unknown to me, and I suppose I've never really thought about it beyond the obvious fact that books come in different sizes and designs. The only problem with the B format is that you can't carry one in the average coat or jacket pocket, whereas A format can usually fit into one fairly easily. When I started taking a serious interest in 'literary' fiction in the mid 80s it soon became evident to me that Picador was the go-to imprint for cool stuff. My first Picador was probably V. when I got turned onto Pynchon, and I had no problem finding it in Dillon's or wherever. A sadly now-defunct bookshop in Southampton city centre had a Picador spinner. First time I visited the shop, I grabbed a lovely chunky copy of The Great Shark Hunt in a yellow cover, and it was the first Hunter S Thompson journalism that I read. I always associate Abacus with Burroughs and Flamingo with Ballard, those elegant 90s-2000s designs

US here. This was fascinating. I have many mass market paperbacks and I love them. I never heard them called pocket books but I think what they are called depends on where you live. Different parts of the country have different names for the same thing. What I dislike are the tall, narrow paperbacks. I don't even know if there is a term for them but whoever came up with that idea should be eviscerated.

I am under the impression that here in the US, the rise of the remainder market has added to the death of the mass market (A format) paperback. As mass market returns were traditionally done by stripping the covers off and sending them back, that was the end of their life. But trade paperbacks are not stripped, therefore they can be resold on the remainder market.

That was the thing I heard in the video that I had to double check:
I know the primary distributor for mmpb's dropped them, but I believe about a month later there was an announcement from the last printer who specialized in them that they would stop producing them.
Now I have to backtrack and figure out how to fact check this. I mean, I don't doubt it, but I can't give you the citations. . .

Okay I just went looking and I can't find the article I read, but more importantly there's a whole lot of articles with a whole lot of disinformation on the first couple of pages of any Google search on this topic.

So double thank you for the video!

Thanks for the industry explanation.  I think there is some hysteria over the loss of the MMPB at least here in the US. It helps to think of trade PBs as the new MMPBs.

Very interesting and good to learn about these formats.  I always wondered what a "trade" paperback was... I thought it meant an academic or university publication 🤣! Thanks Steve.